Abstracts of the Cell Therapy Transplant Canada 2023 Annual Conference.

On behalf of Cell Therapy Transplant Canada (CTTC), we are pleased to present the Abstracts of the CTTC 2023 Annual Conference. The conference was held in-person, 31 May-2 June 2023, in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the Westin Nova Scotian hotel. Poster authors presented their work during a lively and engaging welcome reception on Thursday, 1 June, and oral abstract authors were featured during the oral abstract session in the afternoon of Friday, 2 June 2023. Twenty-three (23) abstracts were selected for presentation as posters and four (4) as oral presentations. Abstracts were submitted within four categories: (1) Basic/Translational Sciences, (2) Clinical Trials/Observations, (3) Laboratory/Quality, and (4) Pharmacy/Nursing/Other Transplant Support. The top four (4) oral abstracts and top four (4) poster abstracts were selected to receive an award. All of these were marked as "Award Recipient" within the relevant category. We congratulate all the presenters on their research and contributions to the field.

Abstracts of the Cell Therapy Transplant Canada 2022 Annual Conference.

On behalf of Cell Therapy Transplant Canada (CTTC), we are pleased to present the Abstracts of the CTTC 2022 Annual Conference. The conference was held in-person 15-18 June 2022, in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Poster authors presented their work during a lively and engaging welcome reception on Thursday, 16 June, and oral abstract authors were featured during the oral abstract session in the afternoon on Friday, 17 June 2022. Thirty-three (33) abstracts were selected for presentation as posters and six (6) as oral presentations. The top abstracts in each of four (4) categories, (1) Basic/Translational sciences, (2) Clinical Trials/Observations, (3) Laboratory/Quality, and (4) Pharmacy/Nursing/Other Transplant Support, received awards for both the oral and poster presentations. All of these were marked as "Award Recipient" with the relevant category. We congratulate all the presenters on their research and contribution to the field.

Phylogenetic analysis reveals a novel protein family closely related to adenosine deaminase.

Adenosine deaminase (ADA) is a well-characterized enzyme involved in the depletion of adenosine levels. A group of proteins with similarity to ADA, the adenosine deaminase-related growth factors (ADGF; known as CECR1 in vertebrates), has been described recently in various organisms. We have determined the phylogenetic relationships of various gene products with significant amino acid similarity to ADA using parsimony and Bayesian methods, and discovered a novel paralogue, termed ADA-like (ADAL). The ADGF proteins share a novel amino acid motif, "MPKG," within which the proline and lysine residues are also conserved in the ADAL and ADA subfamilies. The significance of this new domain is unknown, but it is located just upstream of two ADA catalytic residues, of which all eight are conserved among the ADGF and ADAL proteins. This conservation suggests that ADGF and ADAL may share the same catalytic function as ADA, which has been proven for some ADGF members. These analyses also revealed that some genes previously thought to be classic ADAs are instead ADAL or ADGFs. We here define the ADGF, ADAL, ADA, adenine deaminase (ADE), and AMP deaminase (AMPD) groups as subfamilies of the adenyl-deaminase family. The availability of genomic data for the members of this family allowed us to reconstruct the intron evolution within the phylogeny and strengthen the introns-late hypothesis of the synthetic introns theory. This study shows that ADA activity is clearly more complex than once thought, perhaps involving a delicately balanced pattern of temporal and spatial expression of a number of paralogous proteins.